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Doing Business with Gender: Service Industries and British Business History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Katrina Honeyman
Katrina Honeyman
Affiliation:
KATRINA HONEYMAN is reader in social and economic history at the University of Leeds, England.
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Abstract

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Business historians have failed to recognize British women's participation in business. Beginning in the eighteenth century, English women overcame a range of socially constructed constraints to assume a more important role in financial and entrepreneurial activi-ties than has been hitherto acknowledged. Women's apparent affinity with the service sector in employment, self-employment, and business enterprise has encouraged a limited view of their activities, relegating them to a separate, female sphere, rather than viewing them as part of the masculine world of rational profit maximization. Several approaches drawing upon social and cultural ideas are proposed to rectify the prevailing blindness toward issues of gender. The eclectic methodological underpinning of British business history offers some hope that the topic of gender can soon be incorporated into the discipline.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 81 , Issue 3 , Autumn 2007 , pp. 471 - 493
Copyright
Copyright The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2007

References

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36 This tendency is criticized by Beachy, Craig, and Owens, eds., Women, Business, and Finance, 7-8,10.

37 For example, Vickery, Amanda, The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England (New Haven, 1998);Google Scholar Alison C. Kay, Retailing, Respectability, and the Independent Woman in Nineteenth-Century London, in Women, Business, and Finance, eds. Beachy, Craig, and Owens, 152-66.

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39 The passage of the Married Women's Property Acts finally overturned the practice of coverture, whereby a husband controlled his wife's property during marriage.

40 For example, Lemire, The Business of Everyday Life, esp. chs. 2 and 3; also Petty Pawns and Informal Lending; Judith Spicksley, Was the Single Woman Really Marginal? Lending and Information Networks in Seventeenth-Century England, paper delivered to the workshop of the Women's Committee of the Economic History Society, 2003; and Alison Parkinson Kay, A Respectable Business: Women and Self-employment in Nineteenth-Century London, paper delivered to the Economic History Society Conference, Durham, Apr. 2003. Alastair Owens has also contributed to this area of historical enquiry. See Making Some Provision for the Contingencies to which Their Sex is Particularly Liable: Women and Investment in Early Nineteenth-Century England, in Women, Business, and Finance, eds. Beachy, Craig, and Owens, 20-35; and Green, D. R. and Owens, Alastair, Gentlewomanly Capitalism? Spinsters, Widows and Wealth Holding in England and Wales c.1800-1860, Economic History Review 56, no. 3 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Lane, Women, Property, and Inheritance, 194.

42 Owens, Making Some Provision, esp. 23-33; Freeman, Mark, Pearson, Robin, and Taylor, James, in A Doe in the City: Women Shareholders in Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century Britain, Accounting Business, and Financial History 16, no. 2 (2006): 28182CrossRefGoogle Scholar, demonstrate a growing proportion of women shareholders as well as more positive attitudes toward them after 1850. See also Claire Swan, Independent Women or Desperate Housewives: Female Investors within the Scottish Investment Trust Movement, paper delivered to the fourteenth International Economic History Conference, sess. 83, Helsinki, 2006.

43 Rutterford, Janette and Maltby, Josephine, The Widow, the Clergyman and the Reckless: Women Investors in England, 1830-1914, Feminist Economics 12, no. 1 (2006): 11138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Maltby and Rutterford, She Possessed Her Own Fortune, 220-53, esp. 242-46.

44 Hudson, Sarah, Attitudes to Investment Risk among West Midland Canal and Railway Company Investors, 1760-1850 (Ph.D. diss., University of Warwick, 2002).Google Scholar

45 Phillips, Nicola, Women in Business, 1700-1850 (Woodbridge, U.K., 2006)Google Scholar, robustly challenges the metaphor of separate spheres and concludes that, despite barriers, constraints, disabilities, and unrealistic expectations, women formed a significant part of the expanding economy, and that there was greater cooperation between men and women than the model implies (261).

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47 Ibid., 264.

48 Beachy, Craig, and Owens, Introduction, Women, Business, and Finance, 17.

49 Owens, Making Some Provision, 22. This is consistent with Morris's notion of assertive subordination.

50 Introduction, in Fashion and Famine: Needlewomen in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Harris, Beth (Aldershot, U.K., 2005);Google ScholarGordon, Eleanor and Nair, Gwyneth, The Economic Role of Middle Class Women in Victorian Glasgow, Women's History Review 9, no. 4 (2000): 799;CrossRefGoogle ScholarNenadic, Stana, The Social Shaping of Business Behaviour in the Nineteenth-Century Women's Garment Trades, Journal of Social History 31, no. 3 (1998): 62546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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52 Gordon and Nair, The Economic Role of Middle-Class Women, 799-800. This study also shows how women were able to surmount legal and social constraints to achieve both economic autonomy and influence.

53 Women have occasionally owned manufacturing or productive enterprises, but typically as part of an inheritance.

54 Wiskin, Urban Businesswomen, 9092.

55 See, for example, Davidoff, Leonore, The Separation of Home and Work? Landladies and Lodgers in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century England, in Fit Work for Women, ed. Burman, Sandra (London, 1979), 6497.Google Scholar

56 This was a theme in Davidoff, Leonore and Hall, Catherine, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (London, 1987),Google Scholar challenged by, among others, Lane, Women, Property, and Inheritance, 194.

57 See David R. Green, Independent Women, Wealth, and Wills in Nineteenth-Century London, in Urban Fortunes, eds. Stobart and Owens, 221.

58 The censuses of the first half of the twentieth century show that as the early importance of domestic service declined, women moved into such other service activities as clerical work, insurance and banking, distribution and public administration.

59 Census of Population of England and Wales, 1901, 1911, 1921, 1931 and 1951.

60 Walby, Sylvia, Gender Transformations (London, 1997), 27. Married women's activity rate is now almost as high as that of single women.Google Scholar

61 Equal Opportunities Commission, Women and Men in Britain: The Labour Market, (Manchester, U.K., 2000), 1.

62 Currently, women constitute 82 percent of the part-time workforce. This figure is among the highest in Europe. See Gender and the Labour Market in the European Union, Equal Opportunities Review 129 (May 2004): 20; Hakim, Catherine, The Myth of Rising Female Employment, Work, Employment, and Society 7, no. 1 (1993): 114CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Webb, Michael, Sex and Gender in the Labour Market, in Sex Differences in Britain, eds. Reid, Ivan and Stratta, Erica (Aldershot, U.K., 1989, 2nd ed.), 134.Google Scholar Webb also makes the point that much part-time work is also temporary; Sex and Gender, 144.

63 Walby, Gender Transformations, 31; Craig, Christine, Garnsey, Elizabeth, and Rubery, Jill, Women's Pay in Informal Payments Systems, Department of Employment Gazette 91 (Apr. 1983): 146.Google Scholar

64 Which mirror those taking place in other advanced economies.

65 Trends in Female Employment, Equal Opportunities Review 112 (Dec. 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 22. In 1982, Ann Oakley observed that more than half of employed women in Britain work in three service industries: the distributive trades (shops, mail order, warehouse)17 percent; professional and scientific (typists, secretaries, teachers and nurses)23 percent; miscellaneous services (laundries, catering, drycleaners) 12 percent. Oakley, Ann, Subject Women (New York, 1982), 151.Google Scholar In April 2005 an Equal Opportunity Commission report stated that 1 percent of construction workers were female, and 1 percent of child-care workers were male.

66 Data from Office of National Statistics, Labour Force Survey, spring 2001, shows a correlation between the proportion of women employed and the proportion of women managers in a sector, but in only one case, that of health and social work, did women managers comprise more than 50 percent of the total.

67 Cynthia Forson and Mustafa Ozbilgin, Dotcom Women Entrepreneurs in the U.K., University of Hertfordshire Business School, Employment Studies Paper 40, 2002,1.

68 Some of the important recent and current research on women and investment, how-ever, bridges the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See, for example, the work of Josephine Maltby and Janette Rutterford cited above. The major project funded by the Economic and Social Regional Council (ESRC) on women investors in England and Wales, 1870-1930, promises to provide new evidence on women's financial activity. This will be especially valuable for the early twentieth century, where existing work is very thin indeed. Alison Kay is the senior researcher for this interdisciplinary project.

69 The Lady's Who's Who: Who's Who for British Women: A List of Names of Those Women Who Play a Prominent Part in Society, Arts, the Professions, Business etc., published for the first, and seemingly the only, time in 1939 in London, devoted a small section to women in business. A significant proportion of businesswomen were classed as dog and rare-cattle breeders.

70 Self-employment and small- and medium-sized business are closely related, since most owners of small enterprises are self-employed. Ferry de Goey, Economic Structure and Selfemployment during the Twentieth Century, paper delivered to the EBHA conference, Barcelona, 16-18 Sept. 2004, 2. De Goey argues that business historians have so far neglected small- and medium-sized business; but despite the importance of women in this sector, he proceeds to refer to the entrepreneur as male.

71 Women Entrepreneurs in Small and Medium Enterprises, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Proceedings, 1998, 19. This could apply equally to men.

72 See, for example, Carter, Sara and Cannon, Tom, Female Entrepreneurs: A Study of Female Business Owners, Their Motivations, Experiences and Strategies for Success, Department of Employment, Research Paper 65, 1988, 150.Google Scholar

73 Simon Deakin has argued that the distinction between employment and self-employment took the entire first half of the twentieth century to emerge and be settled. See The Evolution of the Employment Relationship, paper delivered at the International Labor Organisation symposium, Jan. 2002, 2. Goffee and Scace argue that, for women, setting up a small business reflected dissatisfaction with and rejection of the exploitative nature of the capitalist work process and the labour market. Goffee, Robert and Scase, Richard, Women in Charge: The Experiences of Female Entrepreneurs (London, 1985), 37.Google Scholar See also, Davidson, Marilyn J. and Cooper, Cary L., European Women in Business and Management: An Overview, in European Women in Business and Management, eds. Davidson, and Cooper, (London, 1993), 13;Google Scholar and Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe and Colleen Wedderburn-Tate, The United Kingdom, in European Women in Business and Management, 25.

74 Davidson and Cooper, Overview, 13. There was a doubling in the number of selfemployed women, while the total number of self-employed rose by only 60 percent. Such gains were sometimes perceived at the time as the result of high levels of unemployment and the search for alternative means of support. Sara Carter and Tom Cannon also emphasize the particular problems faced by female entrepreneurs when setting up and sustaining business, in Women in Business, Department of Employment Gazette 96 (Oct. 1988): 570. See also Carter, Sara and Cannon, Tom, Women as Entrepreneurs: A Study of Female Business Owners, Their Motivations, Experiences, and Strategies for Success (New York, 1992).Google Scholar The number of women entering self-employment rose by 70 percent between 1981 and 1987. See Alimo-Metcalfe and Wedderburn-Tate, United Kingdom, 25.

75 It also indicates a small percentage decline both before and after this period of rapid growth.

76 Carter and Cannon, Women as Entrepreneurs, 8. Men also tended to establish businesses in activities in which they had previously been employed. Alimo-Metcalfe and Wedderburn-Tate, United Kingdom, 28.

77 In 1986 when approximately half of women self-employed in services were located in the distribution, hotels, and restaurants (DHR) group, only 30 percent of employed women could be found there, whereas 45 percent of women employed in services worked in the public administration, education, and health (PAEH) group, where only 16 percent of self-employed women were occupied. The 1998 figures indicate more correspondence, especially in DHR where the percentages were around 25 percent for each. Forty-five percent of employees worked in PAEH, and the proportion of self-employed women in that group had risen to 25 percent.

78 Sylvia Walby, Mainstreaming Gender into the Analysis of the New Economy and New Employment Forms, paper presented to the ESRC seminar on Gender Mainstreaming, the New Economy, and New Employment Forms, University of Leeds, 3 Sept. 2004, 24.

79 Forson and Ozbilgin, Dotcom Women, 3-4.

80 Goffee and Scase, Women in Charge, 19-21, 143; Forson and Ozbilgin, Dotcom Women, 7; and Alimo-Metcalfe and Wedderburn-Tate, United Kingdom, 28.

81 Durbin, Susan, The Gendering of Knowledge Work in Call Centres, paper presented to the ESRC seminar, Gender Mainstreaming, the New Economy and New Employment Forms, University of Leeds, 3 Sept. 2004, 1516.Google Scholar

82 For example, they are taken less seriously than men because of their assumed prioritization of home and family, their assumed emotional rather than rational decision-making, and other discriminatory perceptions. They are thus disadvantaged not only in the workplace but also in business, as banks, for instance are more reluctant to lend to women. Alimo-Metcalfe and Wedderburn-Tate, United Kingdom, 28; Carter and Cannon, Women as Entrepreneurs, 45-46.

83 Nenadic, in The Social Shaping of Business Behaviour, argues that the vast majority of businesses in nineteenth century Britain, were small in scale, and unmodernised in their structure and strategy, 625.

84 Honeyman, Women, Gender and Industrialisation, 138-47.

85 Bennett, Robert, Gendering Cultures in Business and Labour History: Marriage Bars in Clerical Employment, in Working Out Gender: Perspectives from Labour History, ed. Walsh, Margaret (Aldershot, U.K., 1999), 204.Google Scholar

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88 As Alice Kessler Harris suggests, If we want to approach a multi-dimensional perspective, we need to be aware of the full range of cultural signals that guided decision making at all levels. Ideologies and Innovation: Gender Dimensions of Business History, Business and Economic History 20, 2nd ser. (1991): 51.

89 See, for example, Rose, Networks, Values and Business, 30; Brown, Jonathan and Rose, Mary B., Introduction, in Entrepreneurship, Networks, and Modern business, eds. Brown, and Rose, (Manchester, U.K., 1993), 18;Google Scholar Mary B. Rose, Beyond Buddenbrooks: The Family Firm and the Management of Succession in Nineteenth-Century Britain, in Entrepreneurship, Networks and Modern Business, 127-43.

90 For example, Morris, Men, Women, and Property, 277-78. This work also demonstrates the fluidity of spheres.

91 Honeyman, Katrina, Well Suited: A History of the Leeds Clothing Industry, 1850-1990 (Oxford, 2000);Google Scholar Honeyman, Following Suit, 426-46. The female consumer was constructed in a different way, since, for women, consuming or shopping was perceived as an activity consistent with their nature, or as accepted behavior.

92 In a recent Guardian interview, Minney said she would like to be remembered as having helped to tip the balance towards sustainability. Guardian Weekend, 7 Aug. 2004. Also relevant is the notion of non-utilitarian satisfactions, identified above in Nenadic's study of the Edinburgh women's garment trades. See Nenadic, The Social Shaping of Business Behaviour, 627.

93 For an overview of recent work, see Popp, Andrew, British Business History: A Review of the Periodical Literature for 2002, Business History 46, no. 2 (2004): 156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

94 During discussion at the Barcelona conference, it was suggested, first, that the distinction I drew between women's history and gender history may have salience in the British historiographical tradition but may have less relevance elsewhere; and, second, that even if such a distinction can be made, both approaches can contribute, albeit in different ways, to the development of gendered business history. I think it is important to emphasize that I am explicitly discussing gendering business history, not feminizing it. Walsh in Gendering Endeavours, believes that business history is becoming more inclusive, 187-95.